alt-text: [yellow words saying “abolish cis puberty” next to a trans flag on a digital art wooden background]
How we treat puberty relates heavily to the systems of transphobia, sexism, and quite a lot of other hierarchies. How we treat it is a large component of systematic oppression and must be taken seriously.
Women/female bodies basically stop growing entirely about 2 years after menarche (first period), regardless when that hits. And once menarche hits they only grow another 1-3 inches, typically.
For some girls, myself included, menarche was around 9 years old (the historical normal age of menarche was around 15 years, as far as we can tell, and that age has been going down in modern history) meaning I didn’t really get a chance to grow before my body stopped being able to do so. I have not grown since I was 12. Had I been able to delay puberty by a few years, I may have ended up average instead of 2 standard deviations below average. On the plus side I can wear kids stuff sometimes.
Male puberty doesn’t work that way quite as dramatically, since puberty includes growth spurts through the early-mid 20s, but eventual adult height for men is still based on the height they are when the growth spurts start.
Here’s a really surface level resource that explains further about female puberty if you are interested in learning more.
https://www.familyeducation.com/teens/puberty-sex/do-girls-stop-growing-when-they-get-their-period
Huh, that’s actually super interesting. Thanks for the informative answer and the additional resources, I’ll do a bit more reading about the subject when I have time